Posted
by
timothyon Saturday September 10, 2011 @02:42PM
from the until-proven-innocent dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I have a roommate that insists on using BitTorrent without taking any kind of precautions. He has an affinity for downloading material that is extremely popular and high-risk. He's received a warning from a well-known media giant in the past about his file sharing, but hasn't been sued. We've recently begun living in an apartment together (with one other person) and share our Internet connection and IP address. If his p2p activity leads to someone attempting to take legal action, could I be held liable? How would our accusers differentiate between our computers if we all share the same IP address? Would they just sue the lot of us?" Some lawyers would certainly like to get a look at everything on the other side of the connection. Has anyone out there faced legal problems as a result of someone else's use of your connection?

If the plaintiffs thought they had a chance of prevailing... absolutely. Similarly, if they thought it would work, they'd also sue your ISP, computer manufacturer, parents, doctor and fifth grade teacher.

I agree, from my experience in my own legal disputes and hearing about others basically when you are suing about something you sue everyone involved and let the courts and evidence shown in them decide who actually gets to foot the bill.

Since you cant share ownership of an internet account, someone has to have their name on the paper work. If its you, then its your account and you are liable but also in a position to dictate change. If its him, then its his problem.

Who says "you are liable"??? IANAL, but it's pretty obvious you aren't, either.

The idea that the owner of a piece of equipment is liable for someone else's unauthorized use of it, simply won't fly. Some states have done that exclusively in the case of automobiles, but their legal authority to do even that is on pretty thin grounds.

If somebody, without my permission, uses my internet connection to do something illegitimate, there is no law making me liable or responsible for their actions.

I think "liable" does not mean what you think it means. It doesn't mean you did it. It means you can plausibly be blamed for it. If you are aware that your roommate is engaging in infringing activities using your Internet connection, and you don't do anything to stop it, then it is just naive to think that you won't be found liable. If you want to be protected from this, move, and do not let your "friend" bring computers to your new apartment.

"You are giving the same definition as mellon but acting like you are contradicting him."

No, mellon was trying to contradict ME, when mellon was in fact wrong about my understanding of the word "liable". And to be honest, I am not sure mellon truly understands what it means, or he would not have used the word "blame", which is completely irrelevant to liability.

But you're describing a different case. He's clearly sharing the connection intentionally, which authorizes the usage. His response needs to be to cut off his roommate if the connection is in his name.

That kind of attitude is EXACTLY what lets them get away with this intimidation and harassment bullshit.
If you don't want to stand up for your own rights, at least get the hell out of the way and let other people do it.

Absolutely. Take your name off the ISP contract/account and let the copyright infringer put their name on the ISP contract/account. That is what you are advocating isn't it?

Given that the owner of the account is aware of the copyright infringement and not doing anything to stop it there probably is a legal argument that he is authorizing that conduct in some de facto sense.

"It is reasonable that the owner of the internet connection had a duty of care to protect others from financial harm by his connection."

I think you have a pretty funny definition of "reasonable". How much difficulty should one have to go through, for example, to prevent someone from stealing your car and running over his ex-wife? If you leave the keys in the car, are you liable? How about an alarm with a combination lock? Would you count that as reasonable?

But wait... many people could not afford to have those put on their old cars, or know how to do it themselves. So is it actually reasonable?

But you are saying that somebody should be compelled to use advanced encryption technology in order to block the remote possibility that a neighbor would "borrow" the equipment, and cause the loss of A FEW PENNIES of profit to some company in a far-off state???

I disagree. It is very much foreseeable that if you leave your keys in your car, it could be stolen. And courts have, in fact, ruled at times that people who left their keys in the car could have foreseen the outcome and shared liability for the consequences.

The problem here is in the word "reasonable". What is a "reasonable" duty of care?

If it isn't "reasonable" to demand that people have at least combination-lock security on their cars to prevent the remote possibility of unnecessary DEATHS, then it

Is it? Again, I disagree. In surveys, a majority of router owners had no idea how to turn on encryption. I think that is changing, but slowly.

In contrast, everybody knows how to work a combination lock on a car.

And I don't see a darned thing wrong with the car analogy. Or rather, not analogy, but comparison. Because before you can judge what is "reasonable" or not, you also have to take into account the relative damage that might be done.

I agree. I have a tendency to discuss the generalities, but this is a specific case being discussed, and in this case this guy should tell his roommate to get his own internet connection, or stop the illicit activities, or both.

And setting policies is very good advice, for any commercial -- or even private -- shared arrangement.

Generally, if you want to 'dictate change,' you need to be willing to take on the full cost of the internet connection if the other guy refuses. Otherwise your threats are just empty words, and you look like an idiot.

That's assuming they are already splitting the internet bill. If not, then throw a password on that thing and be happy.

The non-infringing account owner shouldn't be liable in that situation, but is the one who's likely to be named in the lawsuit. And that's not a fun position to be in, even if you can then convince the content owner that they have the wrong person.

this is not legal advice and i may be a lawyer in your state but am not your lawyer and do not represent you.1. If they take legal action you could be sued and held liable. the burden of proof is 1% - i.e. if you are found even 1% liable you could be held liable, even if it was for a trifling amount. its preponderance of the evidence in a civil matter i.e if they show it is more than 51% likely that you were responsible for the 1% liability you are liable.2. your accusers would ask for discovery and depending on the judge and state you would have to give up your computers for them to poke around or use a 3rd party lab to poke around for signs of infringement.3. Yes they would likely sue everyone in the household who owned a computer.

Even if you assume you are 100% legally in the clear, they can still sue you, get your ISP to cut you off, and make your life generally miserable. Sadly being in the right doesn't mean someone else can't accuse you of being in the legal wrong and thus forcing you to prove otherwise.

Actually, and technically, that's not correct. That is harassment, attempted coercion, interference with a legal contract, and a groundless, malicious suit, which are illegal in many if not most states. (It is even possible it falls under the category of a SLAPP suit, but that might be reaching a bit.)

I'm not saying that they don't sometimes get away with it, but what they are actually doing in those situations is ILLEGAL.

that if you receive any letters from any lawyers you will answer them truthfully. So if you get accused of illegal downloads, you would truthfully reply that you didn't do it, but your roommate.

It seems your roommate insists, against your objections, to do things that are illegal, and bound to get you into expensive trouble, without taking any precautions. If the shit hits the fan, you have no obligation at all to support him in any way; your only responsibility is to get out of trouble yourself as cheaply as possible.

Given the roommate's behavior, it's likely that should OP do as you suggest, his roommate will simply deny downloading anything. And I believe the wording on most ISP contracts makes the account owner liable for all activity on the account (with a possible exception for being hacked).

Do people really think blacklists and whitelists and other stupid filtering protocols are going to save them? As if the AA associations can't buy or borrow a billion IP addresses outside their corporate blocks?

Only extreme measures like a VPN through a foreign country give you *any* trustworthy protection, and never forget that absolutely nothing will *ever* protect you absolutely.

A few years ago (circa MS Flight Sim X) my unprotected wireless was used to download and share the aforementioned software through a torrent.
MS contacted my ISP (Cox) and I got a letter from MS's IP dept.
I had to go through quite a bit of paperwork and finally talk to someone at MS.
I explained that I didn't realize my neighbors had access to my wireless (honestly didn't think it would reach).
Basically I was told this was my one and only chance, don't let it happen again and secure my router.

That's still nothing but intimidation. They can't legally make you secure your router! Nor can they try to hold you responsible if there is reason to believe someone else did it... unsecured router or not!

They were bullying you. Nothing more. Nothing less. And you fell for it.

Granted it's a lot of logs - but if you put in a linux+iptables or bsd+pf box as your router, you could log every connection to file - at least text zips well. store them for 6 months, only log connections which become fully established (since if you log half-open connections you'll likely be logging orders of magnitude more). It probably wouldn't take up a huge volume of space if you compress them, and you could also probably not log outgoing connections terminating on port 80 or 443 (though undoubtedly peer clients try and use those from time to time, it'd help you shave your logs if you hedge your bets that someone looking to sue your roomate isn't using 80/443 for their endpoint).

My roommate insists on doing things that might create expensive legal nightmares for me. I've asked him to stop, but he won't. What should I do?

The answer is, "Get a new roommate. Your current one is not respecting you, as evidenced by his disregard for your wishes and the way he's exposing you to potentially massive legal fees. You need to be able to trust your roommate, and you apparently can't trust your current one. Finding a new roommate might be hard, bu

Absolutely. Or cut off their physical access (wired access only, tied to mac address and port number, with the switch in a locked area, authentication required to connect so if he unplugs your cable into his machine and spoofs your address, he still can't use it.

And while you're at it, make sure you don't download anything questionable either. The time you're wasting watching that "must-watch" show/move could be used doing something more interesting.

My roommate insists on doing things that might create expensive legal nightmares for me. I've asked him to stop, but he won't. What should I do?

The answer is, "Get a new roommate. Your current one is not respecting you, as evidenced by his disregard for your wishes and the way he's exposing you to potentially massive legal fees. You need to be able to trust your roommate, and you apparently can't trust your current one. Finding a new roommate might be hard, but it's necessary. Good luck!"

With respect to the legal question you've raised, the only answer here is "talk to a real lawyer." Trusting Slashdot to give you legal counsel is, TBH, just flat-out crazy.

Exactly. What if your roommate were running a meth lab or had a child pornography studio set up in his room? Yes, these are more serious crimes, but the principle is the same. If you are aware that your roommate is engaging in illegal activity that could get you into trouble, it would be prudent to either stop the activity or get a new roommate. You wouldn't give it a second thought if it were one of the more serious crimes listed above.

I think you're underestimating the importance of a potential loss of potential profit. We must go to any means to identify the true perpetrator (even if that means busting into someone's house and confiscating every single computer)! It's so worth it, don't you think?

Technical: Block the standard ports for bittorrent at your router and tell him it's your ISP doing it. Change the password to the router and say the ISP did that remotely because of new T&Cs too. If he's such a low-watt bulb that he doesn't know to download and use PeerBlock or Blocklist Manager, it'd be a stretch to think he'd be able to unravel that cunningly crafted web of deceit.

Manly: Cut him loose. He couldn't give two shits about how his behaviour affects you. You could be a pussy about it and hope you find a conveniently non-confrontational legal loophole so you never have to take any form of stand against his irresponsibility. Or you could relocate your balls and tell him to take a hike because you're not going to be liable for his douchebaggery.

Not legal advice, but why not get your roomie to sign a piece of paper, an agreement between you and him that you have no knowledge of his Internet activities and he is soley responsible for them, and he is paying you because you are the account holder for billing purposes but in all other ways it is his responsibility for his access?
Just imagine if he was looking a kiddie porn... Having that agreement in place ahead of time would really be a Good Thing.

I wasn't making an assumption regarding his competence, I inferred he's less than technically competent given the two facts stated - he's already had a nastygram and he's still doing nothing to mask his activity. As to the ports, AC below has the right idea - just block all outbound connections but web and SSL from his MAC address. Heck, block every site but iTunes to this dick.

Really, is the risk of getting the attention of the copyright/lawsuit industry significantly higher than the risk of, say, him going crazy and murdering you in your sleep or you getting hit by lightning while crossing the street? How many other people are sharing those same extremely popular files as your mate, and how many of them are getting caught?

Starting soon ISPs will be throttling and terminating connections at the request of copyright enforcement firms. This will probably affect internet users on a scale not seen before. While a lawsuit is higher stakes, most people should begin implementing evasive procedures now.

And the minute that starts happening on a large scale, anonymous filesharing is finally going to take off among the larger internet populace. It will be interesting to see whether it will be Freenet, OneSwarm, one of those secret Japanese protocols, or something else.

The main problem I see is that you know about the illegal activity. You could might have gotten off legally if you didn't know even if the ISP account was in your name. But that doesn't stop the *AA from suing you and you spending a lot of money to clear yourself. Remember they have sued people for years before that had no knowledge that their ISP accounts were being used to download copyrighted software. This unfortunately is losing situation for you. If you get sued by the *AA then you are at risk of

"Ignorance of the law" only applies to him. He isn't doing anything; those are the actions of his roommate. If he did not know what his roommate was doing, he would have had more of defense; but since he does know, his liability is greater.

This is not a technical or legal question. It is a question about relationships. I'll take a stab, but, seriously, it does not belong on Slashdot. It belongs on some advice column.

As I understand it, you have a roommate who partakes in risky behavior that you have requested he stop. He does not agree to your request. It seems therefore that you need a new roommate since you do not wish to expose yourself to any potential risk and -- this is the important part -- you and he do not have sufficiently compatible lifestyles. You need a new living situation, whether that be by leaving and finding a new apartment on your own, or kicking this fellow out.

Any other discussions about relative liability or that include technological solutions, while potentially fascinating, are completely and utterly missing the point. This is not a technical or legal problem: it is a problem about relationships.

In this specific situation you are correct. This individual needs to stand up and establish boundaries and consequences. However, the deeper question is worth discussing: how screwed is a person if a housemate draws legal fire on their collective heads? Not every household is as aware of the internet habits of each computer in the house. Not every house has a decent network admin. In fact, the offending party might BE the network admin working under the assumption that their actions won't affect their house

@pz's post is spot on. It doesn't matter if the two of them are boinking or not. Ultimately, the original post is trying to avoid hassle. What s/he may not (yet) realize is that if anyone in the apartment is party to a file sharing legal action, everyone in the unit is. So, this person needs to weigh the hassle of physically removing one or the other person from the domicile (and, potentially, a relationship) v. the hassle of participating in a legal action.

I don't know what agreements you have in place, but if the Internet connection is in your name, then I would not allow anyone else to connect that you cannot trust.

If the Internet connection is in your troublesome roommate's name, I would get your own Internet connection. This may be difficult, but most places have at least 2-3 ISP options (DSL, Cable, Clear, etc.). It's too bad you probably can't get two public IPs for your connection and each have your own router for your devices behind it.

I think paying for your own Internet (or not having your roommate chip in or having to give them a discount for their share of the Internet you are not going to share) is more than worth it.

When (not if, it will happen eventually unless the laws are changed) your roommate ends up in court and should you somehow get named, your defense will be easy. You never connected to his Internet and have your own. Produce your bills as proof, and that's the end of the story for you.

I think the advice that someone else gave about keeping logs of where the connection went is a good idea at first thought - and I'm not lawyer - but that sounds kinda shady - you kept logs to prove it wasn't you? How do you prove there wasn't any editing or that you only ever used that one IP? Just sounds like you could have audit problems proving things since you would have access to the logging system. To have it be bulletproof, you need to have some third-party setting up that system without you having access to it.

I agree with the parent completely. There are a lot of things you can do which MIGHT help you in a court of law, but I don't see anyone being certain. If you are genuinely concerned that this is going to turn into a problem (The fact he's gotten warning letters is a good sign) then get your own Internet Account, or make him get his own. Yeah, it'll cost you like 50 bucks a month or something like that, but that's not really a very large amount compared to dealing with a law suit.

have you considered the possibility that when the shit hits the fan, this roommate will turn around and say it is YOU who did it? can you prove it isn't you? because i guarantee you the other side won't care - as long as they get their pound of flesh. and even if you CAN prove it, it's gonna be a lot of pain and hassle. you'd better start documenting how/what/why it is that it's NOT you who's downloading it now, because you're gonna get caught in the trawler and trawling is damn well what the other side is doing, it's not precision strikes.

Funny how all nations have absurd policies on private behavior if you look hard enough. We're always hearing that Nordic countries are basically the pinnacle of human rights and an educated populace, yet when you read something like this you realize there's no true paradise.

Something totally OT, but relevant to the subject of paradise & freedom, I used to live in Denmark where there is/was some kind of degree of freedom, at least when it comes to free speech, then I moved to Sweden, and guess what - certain drawn porn can get you arrested and thrown in jail for 2 years over here in Sweden.

We just had a case-example on TV, a young MANGA interpreter that converts Japanese text to Swedish, just got arrested and fined for child porn as some of the Japanese manga ser

You are only responsible for his activities if it's criminal liability and you somehow aided and abetted in his actions, either through lending actual assistance, covering him up, or failing to report if you have a duty to do so.

The bar for civil liability is even higher since often you don't have a duty to police your connection from misuse by others.

That said, however, the TOS from your service provider might have a joint and several liability clause that you are forced to agree to in the event that one o

The best thing your room mate can do (besides not torrenting at all) would be to get a seedbox in another country and use private trackers exclusively. This way, your IP address is never exposed to the swarm. You can download all the files from your seedbox to your house computer using encrypted FTP.
You can rent a seedbox, which is just a rented virtual server that is already setup for torrenting, using prepaid credit cards and false personal information. You can get seedboxes in countries with more lax

Thank you for that confession on behalf of all Anonymous Cowards. I'll use your confession in my own defense against every kind of accusation, should it ever become necessary:
Me: "Your honor, that AC already admitted his guilt, so there is no case for me to answer..."

And make sure you have a full hard disk encryption ! -> http://www.truecrypt.org/ [truecrypt.org]And make sure you have your tier1 data some where else and also encrypted (SDHC 32GB or 1,8" SSD sounds good or ?).

What good would full hard disk encryption do against a copyright lawsuit? The judge would order you to decrypt the data, and you'd be obligated to oblige or be found in contempt of court and put in jail (the right to not incriminate yourself is only for criminal cases and this would be a civil case.)

"What good would full hard disk encryption do against a copyright lawsuit? The judge would order you to decrypt the data... "

No. The judge would not, because he has no legal power to do so. They can only do that when they ALREADY KNOW, beyond reasonable doubt, that there is illegal material in the encrypted data. They cannot force you to give up passwords or decrypt data for a mere fishing expedition or discovery.

Standard disclaimer: IANAL. But I do know something about this particular legal topic.

The only exception I am aware of so far in the US is one of a man who was going through customs while coming back into the Unite

"... the right to not incriminate yourself is only for criminal cases and this would be a civil case..."

Actually, this is not true (see the Wikipedia entry on 5th Amendment).

You still have the absolute right to remain silent, and to not implicate yourself. HOWEVER, there are 2 important things to remember about this: (1) some civil cases are treated like criminal cases in regard to the 5th Amendment, and (2) in those that don't while you can still plead the 5th, it can be considered to be evidence against you.

I think you are absolutely right. In a Civil case negative inferences can be drawn from the fact that you refuse to decrypt the partition. Still, it's probably a good idea in any case. a) You may have a chance to negotiate the access to data on your computer so that it protects your privacy other than for the case in court; if the data is unencrypted that will probably happen too late. b) If your computer is swept up during searching for your friend's data but you aren't included in the case then you ma

You are NEVER obliged to self incriminate, during any trial civil or criminal. They can interpret your silence however they want, but they cannot force you to speak up. You can ALWAYS plead the 5th, and if you do so, any testimony you give can't be used against you in a criminal trial. The issue is whether what you say can be used against you criminally.

As for the hard drive, it's not a 5th amendment issue anyway because self incrimination only applies to your person, not to propert

(as a side note, I am ignoring the differences between criminal and civil here. Most of it applies to both sides.)

If they've seized your computer, there will be a subpoena compelling you to provide the correct password. It's not like you'll be held in an interrogation with a cop saying "give me the password or else [blah, blah, blah]". It'll be a long, drawn out process. You'll learn the wonderful world of the legal process. Subpoenas, depositions, countless hearings, motions, and eventually you'll actually end up in the court room to testify about stuff.

"I'm stressed, I can't remember it" might (but probably) won't work on day one. By the time you end up in front of a judge, claiming that you can't remember the same password that you had to type every day to unlock your computer, he'll laugh at you, and then you can learn about "contempt of court".

The only thing you should say is "I have nothing to say without my attorney present". When asked questions that are irrelevant or argumentative, your attorney will say so and advise you not to answer. All in all, the more you say is bad. Refusing to do something, like give a password, is bad. Saying "I can't remember" is bad. Asking your attorney "should I answer?" is good. You have legal counsel, because you are not an attorney. Even if you are, you are directly and emotionally involved. Your attorney doesn't really care, except he/she is paid to protect your interests.

If his illegal activity draws any heat, they will seize every computer in the house while they try to figure out whodunnit. Do you have anything on your computer that could incriminate you in any way? Are you sure? If not, and you do manage to avoid federal prosecution, you still might not ever get your stuff back.

You can prevent your computers from being seized by ratting on your roommate in this situation. And since he insisted, against your wishes, to keep downloading stuff illegally, you have no obligations towards him. (Of course he can try to claim it was you, but that would get him into very serious trouble when yours and his computers are examined. In England it would be called "perverting the course of justice" and is considerably worse than the copyright infringement. )